2006 articles

As millions starve, alarmists block famine solutions

GM WATCH COMMENT: The article below is an Op Ed that has appeared widely in the US press post-Thanksgiving (mostly under the heading - "Famine in a time of solutions") - courtesy of Scripps Howard News Service.

It would be great if any of our American subscribers wanted to write in to any of the papers involved to challenge what is, knowingly or otherwise, nothing other than black propaganda. (Just google on "Famine in a time of solutions" to identify some of the places this was published.)

Its author - Jay Ambrose - was, we are told, "formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver...". It's extremely depressing that such an experienced journalist should have made so little effort to establish the truth.

EXTRACT: Already, alarmist groups have exacted tragedy as the price for their exaggerated fears and peculiar reasoning -- once by persuading the president of Zambia to decline genetically modified corn from the United States during a famine.

"There is something insane about food aid rotting while people starve due to disinformation campaigns," wrote a Tanzanian physician, Michael Mbwille, as quoted in an article on the subject, and, yes, there is, and, yes, it's something worth thinking about in these post-Thanksgiving days.

GM WATCH COMMENT: The only tragedies to do with GM have occurred where it has been hyped - not where it has been opposed. The farmer suicides in India, exacerbated by Bt cotton, are an all too topical example. (New Bt cotton disaster in Maharashtra)http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7323

As we've repeatedly pointed out in the past, there was no tragedy in Zambia. And, ironically, it is the claims to the contrary that constitute the "disinformation campaigns" against which Ambrose rails. (see Fake Blood on the Maize - lobbyists manufacture crimes against humanity)http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5384

FACT: Alternative sources of food aid were successfully substituted for GM grain in Zambia and as Charles Mushitu of the Zambian Red Cross has noted, "We didn't record a single death arising out of hunger." (GM lobbyists lies over Zambia)http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7092

FACT: Far from Zambia's decison to reject GM food aid being guided by misinformation, Zambian President, Levy Mwanawasa, only made his final decision after a team of highly qualified Zambian scientists and economists completed a fact-finding tour of laboratories and regulatory offices in South Africa, Europe and the US. (Fake Blood on the Maize)http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5384

So where does Jay Ambrose get his information?

SOURCE: The original article that the Mbwille quote in Ambrose's article is taken from identifies Michael Mbwille as "a pediatrician from Tanzania and African editor of the Food Safety Network. The network is a nonprofit coalition based in Washington, D.C., that seeks ways to improve global food security."http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=1605

THE REALITY: Here's some more information about Michael Mbwille and the "nonprofit coalition" to which he supposedly connects.

This "Network" doesn't seem to have had any significant existence outside of media work and a website - www.foodsecurity.net. This website is no longer available, since its domain came up for re-registration in October 2006, but when it was it stated that Foodsecurity.net was "an independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world". Despite its global reach, however, Foodsecurity.net's only named staff member was its "African Director", Dr. Mbwille, who penned articles defending Monsanto and attacking its critics.http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=172

Dr. Mbwille is not, incidentally, always to be found in Africa. Foodsecurity's "African Director" has, for instance, enjoyed a sabbatical observing medical practice in St. Louis, Missouri - the home town, as it happens, of the Monsanto Corporation.http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=172

And all the indications are that Foodsecurity's "independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world" is actually little more than a Monsanto front.

When it was available, the news and information at Foodsecurity.net was largely pro-GM articles. When you penetrated beyond the news pages, the content was extremely limited. A single message graced the messageboard. It was posted by an This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - the domain name of The Bivings Group, an internet PR company that numbers Monsanto among its clients. There was also an event posting from an "Andura Smetacek", an e-mail front used by Monsanto to run a campaign of character assassination against its scientific and environmental critics. (see Monsanto's Web of Deceit) http://ngin.tripod.com/deceit_index.html

Here is the contact on the original Foodsecurity.net website registration:

A piece of information not usually disclosed in Graydon (Grady) Forrer's self-presentation is that he was previously Monsanto's director of executive communications. And he was with Monsanto in 1999 - the year the domain of this "independent, non-profit coalition of people throughout the world" was first registered. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=172

Earlier this year Scripps Howard News Service announced that it was severing its business relationship with Op Ed writer Michael Fumento, after "inquiries from BusinessWeek Online about payments Fumento received from agribusiness giant Monsanto - a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book." ("A Columnist Backed by Monsanto," BusinessWeek Online) http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2006/nf20060113_2851_db035.htm

At issue was Fumento's failure to disclose to Scripps Howard editors $60,000 worth of backing from Monsanto. In the light of that debacle, one might have hoped a Scripps Howard Op Ed writer, and former director of editorial policy for Scripps, would have been anxious to demonstrate a modicum of objectivity on this issue.---

As some of us in this blessed land of ours wonder in the aftermath of Thanksgiving whether we overdid the calories, we might consider that millions in the Third World go to bed hungry every night and that there's an exciting means of assisting them being opposed by anti-modernist environmental alarmists with arguments as shameful as their stance.

The means -- it is not entire or complete, but potentially very, very powerful -- is the technology of implanting genes to enhance an agricultural product in any number of ways, perhaps making it more resistant to pests or disease, maybe even putting selected vitamins into it so those eating it will be more resistant to disease.

As much as has been done with Golden rice, a bunch of journalists were told at an expenses-paid Montana conference sponsored by the Property and Environment Research Center. Bill Dyer, professor of plant sciences and pathology at Montana State University, explained that this rice -- which includes genetically inserted vitamin A -- can help protect the millions of people in Africa and Southeast Asia who die or the hundreds of thousands who are rendered permanently blind by vitamin A deficiency every year.

The professor's further remarks supplemented other things I previously had learned about genetically modified foods through reading and interviews -- there are all kinds of safeguards in place to protect against dangers most scientists consider relatively remote, and millions of Americans consume these foods daily without as much as a burp. For people in the Third World, they could be a godsend -- lifting farmers out of poverty as they get more yield per acre or, more specifically, contain a disease now destroying bananas on which hundreds of millions depend for nourishment and their incomes.

The sad, the reprehensible, fact, however, is that various environmental groups and others have made wild, unsubstantiated claims about the dangers of biotech, and sometimes make it erroneously sound as if the technology's only supporters are right-wing ideologues or paid stooges of money-grubbing corporate interests. They not infrequently have indulged in outright sophistry and have engaged in numerous attempts to obstruct development of these foods.

At the Montana conference, I encountered one of the fallacious arguments sometimes put forth by groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. I had been going on at the breakfast table about how George McGovern -- former senator, former presidential candidate, former U.N. food ambassador -- had challenged fellow liberals at a hearing, telling them the best science appeared to confirm how biotech could help fill the bellies of millions of children in Africa and elsewhere without risks of unmanageable proportions. Genetically modified foods were crucial for the poor of this world, I asserted. Nonsense, one conference participant said. There is plenty of food in the world right now. The issue is distribution.

Now, I may have been heaping it on some, and it is true in my view that Third World hunger has no long-term fix that leaves out decent government, free trade and market-oriented economies. But to talk about "distribution" as an answer is to talk about accomplishing something that never has been accomplished in the history of humankind and that likely would require coercive measures almost sure to diminish the food supply over time and disrupt agriculture in Third World lands. Even if you are convinced this utopian glory soon will be ours, is it unwise to assist millions of people in the meantime?

Already, alarmist groups have exacted tragedy as the price for their exaggerated fears and peculiar reasoning -- once by persuading the president of Zambia to decline genetically modified corn from the United States during a famine.

"There is something insane about food aid rotting while people starve due to disinformation campaigns," wrote a Tanzanian physician, Michael Mbwille, as quoted in an article on the subject, and, yes, there is, and, yes, it's something worth thinking about in these post-Thanksgiving days.

Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.